With the advent of tufting equipment, floor covering evolved over time from woven carpet to the tufted carpets in use today. Machine tufting began with a single needle which was similar to a sewing machine. A needle carries a yarn through a primary backing substrate, which forms a stitch on the back side adjacent the primary backing substrate. On the face side, a looper holds the yarn to a specified height above the primary backing substrate to form the pile of the carpet. The tufted yarns and the primary backing substrate collectively are referred to as a tufted textile substrate.
The single needle configuration progressed to multiple needles operating side-by-side, which is how tufted carpets are made currently. Tufting widths of up to sixteen feet are possible with this equipment, and when sold at these widths, these carpets are referred to in the industry as “broadloom” carpets. This type of carpet is the preferred flooring material for today's residential homes and commercial buildings.
Modular carpet products (carpet tiles) were introduced to address some of the problems encountered with the broadloom carpet product. Because individual tiles of an installation can be removed and replaced when soiled or worn, modular carpets were useful in applications where broadloom carpets were impractical, such as offices, airports, and other high-traffic areas.
Both broadloom and tile carpet designs have faced challenges and issues with stability. Without a separate reinforced floor covering and/or one or more secondary backing layers, the broadloom carpet design has the tendency to “creep” leading to undesirable growth. Modular tiles with their heavy backing layers are stiff. As a result, there is a tendency for the modular tiles to cup or curl. Other challenges for modular tiles and broadlooms occur because of issues relating to thickness and weight variation.
In today's carpeting designs, it is practically impossible to separate and recycle the different chemical compositions and components of the multiple backing layers and preformed reinforcement layers from the yarns because of the bonding and use of multiple layers being made of disparate materials. In addition, the manufacturers of floor coverings have significant material costs and expensive manufacturing or processing steps relating to the multiple backing layers, preformed reinforcement layers, and the disparate materials.
With respect to stability, it is known in the carpet industry that the machine direction of a carpet is the greatest contributor to dimensional stability problems. The “machine direction” is considered to be the direction in which the yarn is tufted. The yarns, which form a continuous series of loops in the machine direction, are inherently unstable especially when exposed to heat and/or moisture. Additionally, the primary backing substrates tend to experience more shrinkage in the machine direction of the floor covering. Thus, the machine direction is almost always the more unstable direction of the floor covering.
There has been a need for a dimensionally stable floor covering of lower cost which may be used as a broadloom product or any variety of modular products. While the related patent applications referred to previously disclose a novel and unique universal carpet having a reinforcing backing layer, distinct and advantageous innovations and discoveries enhancing and improving the universal carpet invention will be disclosed and claimed herein.